At the UN climate conference, NGO vanity rules the day

The United Nations' annual climate conference is under way in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, but one would be hard-pressed to find anything interesting happening here. Instead, the Conference of the Parties, as it is called, is little more than a prom for nongovernmental organizations. Self-important staffers with leftist NGOs dress up in their most expensive, business-stylish clothes and parade around trying to impress each other. It’s a bonfire of the vanities served with a healthy portion of self-righteousness.

Temperatures here on the Arabian Peninsula reach 80 degrees by early morning and top off around 85. Within the heat island that is the beautiful Dubai Expo Center, temperatures are certainly north of 90. There are no clouds to provide temporary relief from the sun, and there is little shade to be found.

Even so, people walk around all day in $5,000 tailored suits and designer business dresses that could grace a Parisian fashion show. Sweat visibly accumulates on their foreheads, and many of the shirts and blouses are soaked with perspiration. Nevertheless, $300 ties remain tightly knotted, snugly hugging the neck. Dress shirts remain tucked in, and suit jackets are never taken off, despite the heat.

The women who wear $2,000 jackets perfectly matching their even more expensive blouses never take off their stylish jackets either. Better to sweat and endure stifling tropical desert heat than to miss an opportunity to impress your fellow NGO prom-goers with your height-of-fashion attire.

Apparently, these holier-than-thou climate warriors missed the memo about buying only three garments per year and flying in an airplane only once every three years. The U.N. has a program called the #ActNow fashion challenge. According to the program’s propaganda, the fashion industry is responsible for 8% to 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions. (If we were to add up the asserted emissions percentages of this sector and that, I am quite sure the number is well over 100%.)

How are people supposed to reduce fashion industry CO2 emissions? The U.N. has an answer for that, too. Rent clothes when you can, buy secondhand clothes when you must buy, and buy fewer clothes even if you are buying from Goodwill.

Walking around the NGO prom at COP28, I am quite certain that few — and likely none — of the dapper designer threads being worn here were purchased secondhand.

Inside the themed pavilions within the COP compound, large corporations invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in extravagant booths touting their green credentials. Many of the “booths” are more like large Hollywood movie studios. Each of these corporate studios touts how the company has discovered and is implementing the silver bullet to eliminate global emissions and save the planet. All they need, and all they are asking for, is government subsidies and laws eliminating people’s ability to choose products or energy sources for themselves.

It is not difficult to tell the corporate climate grifters here from the NGO prom-goers. The corporate grifters wear $10,000 suits and have perfected the art of tying their ties and looking at ease wearing such opulent clothing. The NGO prom-goers look about as fitting in their $5,000 suits and fashionable blouses as pimply high schoolers wearing rented tuxes for their 12th-grade formal.

At the end of the day, approximately 100,000 people will have traveled to Dubai — most via vilified carbon dioxide-spewing airplanes — for the right to try to impress each other and pontificate to their donors and the general public that they were at COP28 fighting climate change. In reality, the vast majority of people here are merely fighting against sincerity and good taste.